Bringing culture and tourism together

As part of Culture Kent’s research, we asked Deeson to provide us with Personas & Use Cases for the types of users that will potentially use our Events open data source. In turn, they identified six Personas and explained their corresponding Use Cases. This series of blogs will highlight each one in detail according to their behaviour & motivations or responsibilities, goals, challenges, and interests.

In the previous post, we discussed the Persona & Use Case for the ‘Culturally Curious’, the first of our six-part series on the types of users who will potentially use our Events open data source. In this post, we focus on the ‘Strategic Thinker’, which might be someone specific like an Arts Council Director, or, in a broader sense, someone whose role focuses on how Arts & Culture can assist with economic growth, lead to new skills, and increase community well-being.

People who are ‘Strategic Thinkers’ might state:

“By sharing information we’ll be able to become smarter as a sector, target funding and build a better offer for cultural tourists”

What are their responsibilities?
• Providing strategic direction for cultural growth to the local councils
• Understanding the relationships between arts, culture and local area benefit
• Identifying beneficial partnerships and making the connections

What are their goals?
• Grow the local economy by bringing in new businesses and tourism
• Support the creative industry by developing skills in young people
• Increase community well being to make peoples lives better through arts and culture

What are some of the challenges they face?
• Getting the data required to provide a high service level to local people
• Finance – the sector is just catching up with the impact of the recession
• Understanding how event data maps to other data sets about local well being

What are they interested in regarding an open data source?
• Better data mapping and visualisation tools
• An agreement between local organisations to share data for the benefit of the local area
• A picture of what events have happened, are happening, and are planned for the future to
help target funding to the right areas

Does this sound like you or someone you know? Leave a comment to discuss!

This post is made possible by the work done by Deeson in Canterbury, Kent. We truly appreciate their hard work and collaboration with Culture Kent.